A Beautiful Place to Die Read online

  “I do not know why he did it.” Shabalala put his hat back on and pulled it low on his forehead.

  “If you knew would you tell me?” Emmanuel asked.

  The constable spread his hands out in a conciliatory gesture. “I have told you all I can,” he said politely.

  The black policeman would tell him all he could, not all he knew. Was it possible that the strong bond between black and white playmates, so common in childhood, had actually survived the transition to adulthood for Captain Pretorius and Constable Shabalala?

  “Those men at the station,” Emmanuel said. “They won’t wait for you to tell them what they need to know. They will get information the fastest way. You understand that?”

  “I understand fully.”

  “They can do as they please.”

  “I have seen this,” Shabalala replied.

  Emmanuel turned to leave, then stopped. “You said Madubele and his brothers hit Harry. Who’s Madubele?”

  “The third son of the captain and his wife.”

  “Erich?”

  “Yes. The third son has a temper. He is always exploding like a rifle shot. That is why he was given that name.”

  “Tell me the others,” Emmanuel said. The names given to people by the natives always had a core of truth to them that was instantly recognizable.

  Shabalala held his hand up like a schoolteacher and worked his way from thumb to little finger. “The first one is Maluthane. He deceives himself in thinking he is the boss. The second is Mandla because he is strong like an ox. Three is Madubele and fourth is Thula because he is quiet. Five is Mathandunina, meaning he is loved by his mother and he loves her.”

  Each name was a thumbnail sketch of the Pretorius boys, each one broadly accurate in its content. Even Louis, the runt of the litter, was described not in his own right but in connection with his mother.

  “What’s your name?” Emmanuel asked.

  “It is long. You speak Zulu, but even you will not be able to pronounce it.”

  Emmanuel smiled. It was the first time the black constable had made a joke in his presence. In five or ten years’ time Shabalala might come around to telling him the truth about the captain.

  “Tell me what it is,” Emmanuel said.

  “Mfowemlungu.”

  Emmanuel did a quick translation. “Brother of the white man.”

  “Yebo.”

  “The captain was the white brother?”

  “That is correct.”

  Emmanuel thought of the people on the Pretorius family farm, their hearts soaring as the young Shabalala and Pretorius ran the length and breadth of the property like warriors in the Zulu impi of old.

  “Mrs. Pretorius, what does she think of this name?”

  “She believes we are all brothers in God’s sight.”

  “You and the captain were like twins?”

  “No,” Shabalala said. “I am always the little brother.”

  Emmanuel sensed Shabalala’s resignation. Never the man, always the garden boy. Never the woman, always the cleaning girl.

  “Did the captain think of you that way?”

  “No.”

  “You felt for him as one who is a true brother?”

  “Yebo,” the constable said.

  The leaders of the Afrikaner tribe made a great deal out of blood bonding. Their most secret organization, the Broederbond, meant “blood brothers.” What happened when the bond went across the color line, and tied black to white?

  “I will find out everything,” Emmanuel said. “Even if it hurts you and the captain’s family, I will find it out.”

  “I know this to be true.”

  “Good night, Shabalala.”

  “Hambe gashle. Go well, Detective Sergeant.”

  Emmanuel followed the narrow kaffir path that led to the coloured houses and the shabby strip of businesses serving the nonwhite population. He needed a drink and the Standard Hotel was the last place he was going to look for one. Time to pay Tiny and his son an after-hours visit.

  The path skirted the grounds of the Sports Club. Farm families, overnighting in town after the funeral, were camped out in trucks, which were drawn into a circular formation like the wagon laagers of frontier times. Emmanuel ducked low to avoid being seen. He came up to his full height when the dark outline of the Grace of God Hospital became visible.

  Past a stretch of vacant land decorated with scraps of windblown garbage, he entered the small grid of coloured people’s homes. The first house, set on a wide span of land, was well hidden behind a high timber wall and a row of mature gum trees. Emmanuel ran his hand along the fence. His fingertips brushed against the wood and the small gate that led into the garden. It was good to walk in the dark: silent and undetected.

  This is how Captain Pretorius must have felt: free and godlike as he moved across every boundary in his small town. It was here, on this stretch of the kaffir path, that he beat Donny Rooke to a pulp. Out on the main streets, in the houses and the stores, the captain was a good man: moral and upright. But outside the grid, in the shadows of the kaffir path, who was he?

  Emmanuel passed the burned-out shell of Anton’s garage, two more houses, and a small church. The path swung hard to the left to run along the edge of the vacant lot adjoining Poppies General Store. The next shop along was the fine liquor merchant’s. Emmanuel slowed at the gate but didn’t go in. A woman’s voice, shrill and liquored up, drifted out over the back fence.

  “You bad, Tiny. You a bad, bad man.”

  “How can I be bad when I make you feel so good, hey? How’s that?”

  Emmanuel found a gap in the fence large enough to see through. He pressed his eye to the slit. Tiny and his son, both shirtless and drunk, were working the clothes off two well-used coloured girls. Emmanuel recognized the woman sliding herself over Tiny’s hardened stomach like a grease cloth. She was the one in front of Poppies, walking a toddler along the street.

  “Mmm…Ja…” The coarse-haired woman gave a practiced groan and sucked on a hand-rolled dagga cigarette. “You bad, Tiny.”

  “I’m about to get badder,” Tiny promised in a sodden voice. “Let me see some.”

  The woman threw her unbuttoned shirt to the floor and lifted a drooping breast up for inspection. “This what you want?”

  Tiny was on her nipple in a second. The wet sound didn’t bother Theo, who hammered away at a fat brown girl with two missing front teeth. The girl, built to absorb maximum thrust, managed to take deep sips from a whiskey bottle even as Theo worked his magic on her.

  Emmanuel stepped back. No chance of a drink just at the moment, but Captain Pretorius was onto something. A night on the kaffir paths was worth twenty door-to-doors.

  The split where he’d lost his late-night visitor was up ahead. The rustle of footsteps broke the peace. Someone else was out, skirting the town in the dark. Emmanuel retreated into the shadows.

  Louis trotted past. Emmanuel waited until he got well ahead, then followed. The boy wasn’t lost; he walked as if he owned the kaffir path. The light from Tiny’s courtyard cut into the darkness. Louis moved in on it like a moth.

  The boy stopped and knocked on the gate. The noises from inside drowned him out. He tried again.

  Emmanuel slipped into the space between the liquor store and Khan’s Emporium. A shirtless Tiny opened the gate to Louis.

  “What you want?” the coloured man asked. He was in a foul mood.

  “Give me something small,” Louis said.

  “No dice. I promised your father. Never again.”

  “The captain’s gone,” Louis said.

  “What about your brothers? What happens when they find out?”

  “They won’t.”

  “Ja, well…they better not,” Tiny said, and retreated into his courtyard before reappearing with a small bottle of whiskey.

  “How about a smoke?” Louis asked, and slipped the bottle into his pocket.

  “What? And get my business burned down when Madubele finds ou
t?” Tiny waved the boy away. “Make tracks.”

  “He won’t find out.”

  “If he does? You going to make him pay compensation like the captain did for Anton? You lucky I gave you anything. Now get moving before someone sees you.”

  “The captain’s gone to the other side,” Louis repeated. “There’s no one to see us.”

  Tiny ended the conversation by closing the gate in Louis’s face. The boy unscrewed the whiskey bottle, took a long swallow, then raised his free hand to the sky with his palm held open. Another swig from the bottle and Louis’s clear voice graced the empty lot and the night sky.

  He sang “Werk in My Gees Van God,” “Breathe in Me Breath of God,” a well-known Afrikaans hymn. The tune was the source of uncomfortable memories and even now Emmanuel could recall the words: Blend all my soul in Thine, until this earthly part of me glows with thy fire divine.

  Was Louis able to distinguish between the whiskey fire in his belly and the divine fire of the Holy Spirit? The back gate to the liquor store swung open and Tiny pushed his face out.

  “Keep it for church, Pretorius. You’re spoiling the mood.”

  Louis raised the bottle in a salute, then sidled off in the direction of the coloured houses and the Sports Club where the overnighting white families were camped. What was he going to do there? Give a sermon? Or find a dark corner to do a little of the devil’s work?

  The kaffir path was a gold mine of information and Emmanuel sensed that at least part of the answer to the captain’s murder lurked out here in the shadows of the town.

  The main street was in darkness, as was the dirt road running to The Protea Guesthouse. He passed the police sedan, its locked boot home to the filthy suit and the captain’s marked calendar. Tomorrow he’d find a proper home for the sensitive items. The Security Branch could jimmy a boot lock with no effort.

  The door to his room was ajar and the light was on. He stepped inside. Piet and Dickie lounged on either side of the bed. Clothes and papers were dumped onto the floor.

  Piet yawned and lit a fresh cigarette.

  “You always pack this lightly, Cooper?”

  “A hangover from the army,” Emmanuel said. “You need to borrow a clean tie, or was it starched underwear you were after?”

  “Your fondness for old soldiers?” Dickie asked. “Is that a hangover also?”

  Emmanuel pulled up a chair and sat down. “I confess. I got to the rank of major by bending over for all the Allied generals. What else do you want to know?”

  “We didn’t come to ask questions,” Piet said. “We came to tell you something.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “In the next day or two”—Piet spoke through a curtain of smoke—“we’re going to know everything about you, Cooper. What you drink. Who you’re fucking. Where you buy those sissy ties. We’ll know it all.”

  “I drink tea white, no sugar. Whiskey neat. Water when I’m thirsty. I haven’t fucked anyone since my wife ran back to England seven months ago, and I get my sissy ties from Belmont Menswear on Market Street. Ask for Susie. She’ll help you find the extra-large sizes.”

  “It’s good you have a sense of humor,” Piet said. “You’ll need it.”

  “When you take the credit for any arrests? Or when you dump a bad result on me?”

  Piet’s smile was a slash cut into his acne-scarred face. “Either way, you and your boyfriend van Niekerk are going to regret trying to grab a piece of our investigation.”

  “I thought the two of you came to my room because you wanted to be friends. You won’t be bunking with me tonight, then?”

  Dickie flushed red. “No wonder your wife left you.”

  “You’re the one who came to my room uninvited,” Emmanuel said. “Have a good time looking through my underclothes, Dick?”

  Dickie leapt to his feet.

  “Sit down,” Piet instructed him. “I have to tell Cooper a few things.”

  “Threaten away,” Emmanuel said. It was getting late and he’d had enough of the Security Branch.

  “Seven AM tomorrow morning we will go to King’s farm. You will show us over the hut. You will then investigate the Peeping Tom story. All other leads are our territory.”

  “There’s only two of you,” Emmanuel noted.

  “No,” Piet corrected him. “The local guys, Hepple, Shabalala and Uys will make up the rest of our team.”

  Emmanuel had no trouble interpreting the information. The Security Branch was officially shutting him out of the case.

  “Nice to see some people still make house calls,” he said when Piet and Dickie squeezed their giant frames through the doorway.

  Piet stopped and flicked his lit cigarette butt into the garden. “Let me tell you how this will end, Cooper. If you work against us, I will find you out and then Dickie here will beat the English snot out of you. That’s a promise.”

  Emmanuel closed the door on the Security Branch. His breath was tight in his chest. He resisted the urge to gather his scattered clothes, throw them into his bag, and head back to his flat in Jo’burg. He was in Jacob’s Rest on Major van Niekerk’s orders. The choice to leave wasn’t his to make.

  “Fuck them up.” It was the sergeant major with some gentle late-night advice. “Go in hard. Take no prisoners.”

  Emmanuel looked up at the ceiling. He’d hoped he’d heard the last of the Scotsman and his deranged pronouncements out on the road.

  “Take the tire iron. Give them a taste of steel.”

  Emmanuel touched the lump on his skull. His head ached, but not enough to bring on a delusional episode. He emptied five white pills into the palm of his hand and chased them down with water. He lay back down. The voice would go away as soon as the medication took effect.

  “Use the element of surprise.” The Scotsman continued his barrage. “Get them before they get you, soldier.”

  “It’s peacetime.” He didn’t bother answering out loud. He knew the sergeant major would hear him fine. “Killing people isn’t legal anymore.”

  “What are you going to do, then?” The sergeant major was at a loss now that brute force wasn’t an option.

  “Figure it out,” Emmanuel said. “Find the killer.”

  “Hmm…” The prospect of a peaceful solution threw the Scotsman off balance. “How are you going to do that?”

  “Don’t know yet.”

  “Do you have a plan?”

  “Not yet.”

  “I see…” The sergeant major’s voice drained away into the darkness.

  The pattern on the ceiling changed when the wind moved the tree outside the window. Figure it out? That was easy to say, but what did he have? A couple of coloured girls passing as white, a father and son who played with cheap whores, and a wily white boy with a taste for whiskey and dagga. Big news in a little town, but no match for the solid evidence he’d let slip away from him at the hut. And who’d left the note with King’s name on it in the dead of night? The killer or someone trying to help the investigation?

  “You have the calendar.” The sergeant major fought his way past the flow of medication.

  True, he had the calendar. But how was he going to get across the border without drawing the attention of Piet and his gorilla?

  “Sleep,” the sergeant major instructed in a slurred voice. “I’ll keep the dogs at bay for you.”

  Darkness folded in and Emmanuel floated down to a blackened barn smoldering in twilight. The sergeant major sat in front of the ruin surrounded by a dozen soldiers in torn and bloodied uniforms. One of the soldiers turned to Emmanuel. His face was reduced to lacerated flesh and smashed bone.

  “All eyes to me,” the sergeant major ordered. “Gather round, lads, and let’s talk about drinking and fucking. And women and children and home. Our man Cooper needs a kip.”

  The soldier with the smashed face laughed. The troops pressed close around the sergeant major. Emmanuel closed his eyes and fell asleep.

  9

  EMMANUEL EASED THE P
ackard into the space next to the Security Branch Chevrolet at 6:55 the next morning. The police station appeared small and abandoned in the morning light. Piet wound his car window down and leaned out.

  “Change of plan, Cooper. Follow us.” He gave the command and Dickie flicked the engine on. “We’ll make a stop at the black location first, then go to Pretorius’s hut.”

  “Whatever you say, Lieutenant.”

  Dickie and Piet swung a right at the Standard Hotel and headed west on the main road. Emmanuel turned in behind them and pressed the accelerator.

  He couldn’t get a handle on why the Security Branch was heading to a black settlement outside a small country town. Not a single clue led in that direction.

  They peeled off onto a pitted dirt road and minutes later entered the black location, a haphazard planting of cinder-block houses and mud huts on a dusty span surrounded by veldt. Children in Sunday clothes played hopscotch in front of a dilapidated church with a rusted tin roof.

  The Chevrolet pulled to a stop near the children and Piet waved a boy over. It was Butana, the little witness from the crime scene.

  “Shabalala”—Piet raised his voice to a near shout so the kaffir boy understood—“go get Constable Shabalala. Understand?”

  “Yes, baas.” Butana raised the volume of his voice so the Dutchman understood, then slipped off his too big shoes and took off down the dirt road that bisected the location. The other children followed behind, happy for an excuse to put some distance between themselves and the white men in the big black automobiles.

  Emmanuel got out of the Packard and scoped the scene. It was a clear spring day. Fallow cornfields ran from the edge of a grassed area to a stream swollen with night rain. Beyond that, a lush carpet of new grass and wildflowers spread out beneath a blue sky and a roll of white clouds.

  Breathtaking, Emmanuel thought. But you can’t eat scenery.

  He turned his attention to the irregular grid of dwellings. They were ramshackle constructions put together with whatever was at hand. A corrugated iron roof patched with flour sacks to keep out the rain. A fifty-five-gallon drum rolled into a doorway to keep out the draft. It was spring, but the memory of a hard winter lingered over the native houses.